I received your package containing your wheat field
and the twobedrooms.
I particularly like the last one, which is like a bouquet of
flowers in its colouring. It has a very great intensity of
colour. The wheat field has perhaps more poetry in it; it is
like a memory of something one has once seen. Tangui is framing
it at the moment, and on January 3 everything will go to
Brussels. Now there is something which gave me a lot of
pleasure. Mr. Lauzet, the lithographer of Monticelli's
pictures, came to see me at my home. He came to see ours, and
he thought them very fine. As regards the flowers, he doesn't
think he can reproduce them, for the slabs are monochrome, and
he doesn't think he will be able to render the effect of that
picture in a single colour. He will start with the
“Italian Woman.” But what pleased him most were
your canvases and drawings; oh, my dear fellow, that man
understands them!

A long time ago now he saw some of them at Tangui's, and he
was really glad to see everything I have here; while going
through the drawings he came across a gatherer of fallen apples
which he liked very much, and I made him a present of it, for I
think you would have done the same. Next day he came to see me
again at the shop to ask me whether it was not possible to have
another drawing which you did at the very beginning of your
stay at St. Rémy. On the left there is a small
cluster of somber trees against a sky with a waxing moon, on
the right a low wooden gate. He told me that he could not get
this drawing out of his mind, that it was even finer than the
drawings by V. Hugo, which he liked very much, and so on. I
proposed to him to exchange it for a lithograph from his
Monticelli album, and he accepted immediately. The album is
still far from completed, but he will finish it. Cottier and
Reid have subscribed for several copies, so that his printing
expenses are covered. He has got ready sixteen of the
twenty-five lithographs he intends to make.

I think he has been most successful in that head of a child
which we saw at La Roquette's that time. The artist made a very
sympathetic impression on me. He is from the South and has
something of the Spaniard about him, a pale face with a black
beard, but at the same time he has something gentle like an
English poet. It is a great pity that he has not done any slabs
in different colours, for now one can get no idea of the force
of the colours, which Monticelli was one of the first to use,
availing himself of a contrast in order to arrive at a strong
effect while preserving harmony. The slabs I have seen are like
etchings on stone, as Marvy made them.

You say that at times you think you would have done better
to have remained a merchant, but do not say such things. Take
Gauguin, for instance. I am fully aware of his talent, and I am
fully aware of what he wants to do, but I have not seen my way
to selling anything whatever for him, and yet I have all kinds
of pictures of his. The public is most rebellious about things
that are not made in “perfect order.” It is obvious
that Gauguin, who is half Inca, half European, superstitious
like the former, and advanced in his ideas like a number of the
latter, cannot work in the same manner every day. He is very
unhappy because it has not been possible to find something for
him on which he can live. His most recent pictures are less
saleable than those of last year. Last week he wrote to tell me
that one of his children fell out of a window, and was picked
up nearly dead. And yet they hope to save him. He would do
anything to get a little money, but I am unable to procure it.
1 Pissarro too is at his wits end. He is working
like a slave. He made a very pretty fan for Jo. Peasant women
running about in the fields with a rainbow in the background.
So far he has not see that gentleman at Auvers, at least he
does not write anything on the subject; the best thing for you
would be to come and stay with us in the spring, and then go
into the country yourself to see whether you can't find a
boarding house to your liking. We certainly ought to be glad
that you are so much better in comparison with the same period
last year. At the time I was afraid you would not recover. We
are expecting Wil on January 2; she is going to stay with us
for a month. I agree with you that it would be delightful if
she married, and the man who got her would find a charming
wife.

Cor writes often from the Transvaal. Life over there can
hardly be very amusing. There are no plants or flowers. When
there is not a torrid heat, it rains in such a way that the
whole country is swamped. One day is absolutely like another,
which is why, he says, he detests Sundays and other times of
leisure.

Here the weather is abominable, cold and grey, and nearly
everybody is ill. How are you? Is it as cold in your part of
the country as it was at Arles? I am curious to see your olive
trees; I expect they are beautiful. The sunflowers were on show
at Tangui's this week, and made a very good effect. Your
pictures brighten Tangui's shop; Father Tangui is very fond of
them, but he does not sell the other things any more than
yours. I like the two drawings you sent me very much. Do you
want me to send some of them to Brussels? Please let me have
your reply by return mail, for there is no time to lose about
the framing. Jo sends her kindest regards; she is very well,
relatively speaking. I hope you will paint the portrait of the
little one next spring. I shake your hand cordially, and I hope
you will have a nice New Year's Eve.